How to Refinish Outdoor Furniture With a Powder Coating
Finding a professional, custom powder coating shop has its advantages. All those garage sale and thrift store finds can be easily brought back to life. A quality shop will enjoy educating customers about the process and the advantages of powder coating. Most customers will be pleasantly surprised and somewhat overwhelmed with the available choices of color and texture. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Reputable powder coating shop
- Curing oven
- Abrasive blast setup
- Electrostatic powder spray gun
- Hardware
Instructions
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Powder Coating Outdoor Furniture
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Find a reputable and professional powder coating shop. There are two basic types of coating shops -- manual spray (custom) and line coating. Line coating is usually meant for high-production jobs, while custom coaters usually take on more variety. Ask questions when interviewing shops, such as "how do you prepare jobs?", "do you use primer?", "what is your time frame?", "do you guarantee your work?" and so on. High-quality shops will stand behind the work they do and will take the time to explain their process to you.
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Select a color. Powder comes in virtually any color you can imagine. Textures include fine sandpaper, river, wrinkle, cast and hammertone, to name a few. If you are trying to match or coordinate with another color or texture, the best way is to bring a swatch to your powder shop. There, you can look at color chips, and if you do not find a match, your swatch can be sent to a specialty powder company like Prismatic Powders to be matched. You can also do multiple colors on the same piece of furniture -- either on the disassembled parts, or by masking designs.
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Anything metal can be powder coated. All metal furniture should be disassembled as far as possible, and new stainless steel or powder coated hardware installed after furniture is coated.
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After it is taken apart, the furniture should be abrasive blasted. Also known as sandblasting, this cleans the metal and removes oil, dirt, rust and old paint and creates a profile -- microscopic peaks and valleys in the metal surface that grab and hold the powder.
Note: If the furniture was previously powder coated, it may require chemical stripping before it is blasted. Because of its plastic nature, powder tends to become heated and goop up because of the friction created by blasting.
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After the furniture is prepared and hung, it should be prebaked to remove oils and help remove the static charge built up during abrasive blasting.
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After the furniture is prebaked, a primer coat should be applied. Primers used in powder coating are also powders, applied to grounded metal using a high-voltage spray gun the same as the color coat. Powder sticks on the grounded metal through electrostatic charge, and when placed in the oven melts together to form a continuous protective coat. Primer adds durability and helps smooth the final coat.
Place the racks of furniture into the curing oven just long enough to gel the primer.
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After primer, all pieces should be inspected for rough spots and irregularities and sanded smooth if necessary.
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The final coat of color is then applied based on manufacturer's directions and put into the oven to cure.
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Curing is an art based on the type and brand of powder, thickness of the metal and oven size. Most powder manufacturers recommend that part substrate temperature reach 400 degrees Fahrenheit and stay at this temperature for 10 to 15 minutes to cure.
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Once cured and cooled, the furniture can be given a final inspection and assembled. Cooling depends on the ambient temperature, but most furniture cools in 20 to 30 minutes. If all is okay, you can pick up the items and begin using immediately.
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To care for and clean powder coated furniture, simply wash with a hose and dry with a chamois-type cloth. If it is very dirty, use a soft, non-abrasive cloth and soapy water. If your furniture develops swirly scratches (like the hood of a car), use rubbing compound to lightly rub the scratches out. Although most powder contains UV protection, it is still a good idea to cover furniture or store it inside during the winter.
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Tips & Warnings
A high-quality, professional powder coater will take the time to make sure you are fully satisfied with the color selection and understand as much about the process as you wish. Some of the more artistic custom coaters also delve into the science and magic of mixing powders and adding metallic flake. However, even without mixing there are plenty of beautiful and durable colors from which to choose. Make sure any plastic parts are removed. If the furniture has soldered joints, be sure to let your coater know -- these can't withstand the heat of the oven, and the soldered joints will melt. A quality coater will look for this before coating. Not all powder shops use primer, so be sure to ask.
Do not use scrubby-type sponges or abrasive cleaners on powder coated furniture. These will dull the finish. Powders are not all created equal. Some low-quality, no-name powders contain more filler than pigment and result in a poor end product. Ask your powder coating shop if they are using powder from widely known companies like Cardinal, Dupont, Spraylat, Tiger Drylac, Prismatic, Sherwin Williams, Rohm Haas and Akzo Nobel.
References
- Photo Credit all photos Ziffel Manufacturing
